An ode to Toontown’s mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics

Courtesy of Toontown Rewritten.

Toontown was a beloved massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG, that lived in a happy little corner of the internet from 2003 to 2013. The game centered on a town full of cartoon animals — including non-playable Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck—trying to reclaim their kooky, fun-loving neighborhood and fight back against greedy, corporate robots who would do anything to make some cash.

The game came to a bitterly ironic end when Disney executives decided to shutter the game and shift their focus to other, more profitable gaming services. (Like Club Penguin Island. Remember Club Penguin Island? No. You don’t. All of these more profitable gaming services all failed swiftly and miserably.)

Fortunately, a ragtag group of Toontown super-fans came together to re-create the game in the form of Toontown Rewritten, an almost exact replica of old Disney game. This recreated game has been such a buoy throughout quarantine for me and my friends, and I’m stoked to write about it now.

Courtesy of Engadget.

Toontown’s Core Game Mechanics

Toontown is so many games wrapped up into one, but at its core, there are a few key mechanics that help define the game’s dynamics and aesthetics.

1. Cooperative Play

Toontown is all about cooperative play. Toons battle together against the “Cogs,” either on the streets, in Cog buildings, or boss battles. Up to four Toons at once can battle Cogs, and eight Toons total can go up against Cog bosses. Battle outcomes depend heavily on the players cooperating and communicating with each other to strategize how best to take down their enemies while sustaining as little damage as possible. The learning curve for battle strategy isn’t that steep, and there is so much fun that comes with being on the same page as your teammates.

The core aesthetic (and type of fun) that Toontown’s cooperative play targets is a keen sense of fellowship. The fun and delight that come with working seamlessly in a ridiculous cartoon fight against evil corporate robots is a truly beautiful thing.

Courtesy of Toontown Rewritten’s Twitter account.

2. Leveling Up

Another key mechanic of the game is leveling up, either by gaining total health (what the game calls “Laff points”), or advancing the number and strength of the attacks (or “gags”) you can carry. Players start off with only 15 Laff points, and only two low-level gags, but can level up all the way to 137 Laff points, and a total of 42 gags, which get more powerful the more you train. For me (and for many, I imagine), there’s absolutely a distinct sense of pride that comes with leveling up. Especially high laff points — in the neighborhood of 120+—denote an impressive wealth of experience. Having high-level gags and low laff is another impressive achievement, and usually means the player must be good at strategizing/staying alive in challenging battles.

Broadly, as with any game, leveling up means that players are learning to master the game, and the pursuit of that mastery is in and of itself really fun. Within the MDA framework, though, Toontown’s leveling mechanic balances abnegation and competition. Leveling up sometimes requires mindless-yet-enjoyable chugging through tasks and Cog facilities; at the same time, I feel this push (especially when playing with real-life friends) to see who can get the best gags/highest Laff points the fastest.

A Toon holding a pie. Courtesy of Toontown Rewritten.

3. Roleplay

I hadn’t really considered the roleplaying mechanic to be of vital importance in how I experience the game and derive fun from it, but I do think that there’s something to be said now, in quarantine, about having the freedom to lose myself in my own Toon character and Toon-y world for an hour or so. Though the game undoubtedly references the real world in myriad ways (the not-so-subtle gentrification in the form of Cogs taking over Toon buildings; the “bad guys” of the game existing as capitalists who are literally called “Cogs”), the roleplaying part nevertheless serves as a lovely form of escapism.

In this way, Toontown’s roleplaying mechanic lends to the aesthetic that Hunicke et. al. call fantasy. There is a brilliance in the simplicity of escaping into Toontown and experiencing a world full of bright colors, laughter, and childish joy. I think that’s why many of the people who played and continue to play Toontown in its revived form are actually adults, people in the working world who crave a break from corporate monotony, who can sink their teeth (or… paws, as it were) into the effervescent world of Toontown.